The priest again. Longing. One thing laid down and another taken up and laid down. Hunger—hunger and thirst—cold and hunger and thirst. If you were in warm taverns, if you were in palaces, yet cold and hunger and thirst. You must hunt warmth, you must hunt bread, you must hunt water. And when you thought you had found came the snow in at the door, came the harpies and snatched the tables away!
God—Christ and His Mother—heaven. They had the food—the water that quenched thirst,—the inner fire.
Where were you nearest, nearest?
Work fallen away because he must hunt. Cronies and those whom he thought friends estranged.
Hunt and hunt and hunt. Dig inside, and outside serve—
Where was the outer land that was nearest inner?
God and Christ and His Mother and heaven. They dwelled in the inner that he was hunting. Holy Church was the nearest land.
The moon on monastery fields—the moon on the coasts of Italy!
The rising moon in the dark wood where he walked and tried to talk to God and his soul—and at last shut his hands and buried his forehead upon them against an oak tree, and said, “I become a monk.”
The moon on the garden of herbs, the moon on Silver Cross cemetery.